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Focus: Meteorites

Mission statement: "The Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies' mission is to enhance our knowledge of nature through rigorous scientific studies in meteoritics, the planetary sciences and polar studies.

One of the main goals of the Center is to curate one of the world's largest meteorite collections and to provide the scientific community with samples for high quality scientific research. The Center strives to maintain a balance between serving current research needs and preserving the collection for the future generations.

The Center is engaged in educational outreach to the public, to educators at all levels, and to students at the undergraduate and graduate levels."

The world-class meteorite collection at The Field Museum is an invaluable resource to the cosmochemistry and meteoritics community. The Robert A. Pritzker Center was established in 2009 through a major grant by the Tawani Foundation.

The current research focus at the Center is on presolar grains to understand our parent stars and the history of our Galaxy, and on the delivery history of extraterrestrial matter to Earth through the study of fossil meteorites and micrometeorites found in sediments, and terrestrial impact craters. We are also part of the international research consortium involved in the study of modern interstellar dust brought back by NASA's Stardust mission. Science at the Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies was recently featured in two Science@FMNH podcasts.